The Japanese have never been skilled at communication, but they have been able to fall back on the belief that everyone understood each other without saying anything. Unfortunately, this has never applied to non-Japanese.

While working on the island of Guam in the early 1970s, I had regular business dealings with the expat Japanese business community — basically a good-natured crowd who were used to hearing locals mangle their language on a daily basis. One day, while visiting ...